Empire

Thomas Pakenham describes the ill-fated but remarkable efforts of a tiny French naval expedition to help conquer Ireland for the rebels during the 1798 Rising.

The Republic of Guinea has been the scene over the centuries of several attempts at state-building. Basil Davidson records how the memory of past achievements strongly influences West Africa today.

‘If this Empire seems an evil thing to me, it is not because I hate the British...’ B.G. Gokhale on Gandhi’s attitudes to empire upon the centenary of his birth.

From Jefferson onwards, writes Arnold Whitridge, many nineteenth century United States leaders hoped that Cuba could be induced to “add itself to our confederation.”

Raymond A. Mohl describs how the nineteenth century history of Anglo-Russian conflict in Central Asia is marked by gradual Russian advances and gradual British retreats.

The first sod of the longest railway on earth was turned by the last of the Tsars in 1891; Hilda Hookham describes an epic process of construction, with the line finally completed in 1904.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writes Louis C. Kleber, the British came to America largely as settlers; the French as explorers and fortune-seekers.

J.D. Hargreaves introduces a prophet of nationalism in the coastal countries of West Africa.

From 1775 onwards, writes Mildred Archer, a succession of British officials delighted in the centre of Hindu religion and learning upon the banks of the Ganges.

A manager of men and a master of contemporary politics, writes Esmond Wright, Dundas was Pitt's energetic colleague “during the most critical years in British history except for 1940”—not a hero, but a vigorous man of affairs who “rendered some service to both his countries.”